Simon & Louises South American Blog

This is a tourist train from Salta – something I had been looking forward to for a while (get this train fascination from my dad I think!!). Anyway the train goes to the La Polvorilla Viaduct at 4220 metres above sea level (in the clouds of course!) and then back again, taking a whopping 15 [...]

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Greetings… After kicking back in Potosi, we moved onto a wee place called Uyuni, which is famous in bolivia for the tonnes of white powder it produces, which is exported all over the world and is a vital part of the bolivian economy. Indeed, they have so much of the stuff, you can even stay [...]

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We did a 3 day tour from Uyuni to the Salt Flats and it was absolutely amazing! We were with a great group of people which always helps – there were 3 jeeps all travelling together with a group of 12 travelling as a tour group and another 6 people travelling independently like us. The [...]

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I had the pleasure, though it is clearly the wrong word, of entering the silver mines of Potosi in Cerro Rico. Cerro Rico means “rich mountain”, though the local miners call it “the mountain that eats men”. (Extracts taken from H2G2) It’s unclear when exactly silver was discovered in Cerro Rico; one story goes that [...]

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Hola all from Argentina!!! Still got a load of photos to upload from our recent tours in Bolivia … mainly the Salt Flats tour that we did that was just amazing … we are on the case so they will be appearing shortly!!! We are now in Salta in North West Argentina shortly to be [...]

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We were in Sucre for just over a week … Sucre is officially still the capital of Bolivia even though in reality La Paz is as government is there and stuff. Its a very relaxing city with lots of colonial buildings. We decided to spend a week doing some more Spanish and did another course [...]

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… here are a few photos from our Karaoke night in Vila Serrano and then the Tarabuco market with lots of indigineous people!! Enjoy!!!

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We decided to have a splurge from samaipata, and travel the Vallegrande Region seeing some famous places that people never go to. Our guide was the amazingly cool and well learned Ben (http://www.benverhoeftours.com/) who really knew his stuff. We met him and straight away liked him, so much so we were convinced to spend a [...]

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Samaipata was the first pace we really visited in Bolivia … we were in Santa Cruz for about 5 days but Simon was will so we didn’t really do very much and there isn’t a great deal there really! So to get to Samaipata (a small town of about 4000 people) you go to a [...]

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From the Brazilian border (Corumba or Quijarro depending whether you are in Brazil or Bolivia) to Santa Cruz in Bolivia – the only choice of transport is the Expresso Oriental which was kindly nicknamed the Death Train in the 80s. Apparently Brazil have been building a road for the past 12 years (well Brazil are [...]

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